The author is a poet, counsellor, and occasional scholar-in-residence. Musings on everything from advaita ("non-dualism") to sustainable living, interspersed with poems. Thanks to Zvi Jaspan of Kibbutz Tzora for the name for this blog.

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Reporting on Terror in Australia and Israel

I don't look at "the news" too much on television, but when my baser
instincts seduce me and I do watch, I often get left feeling hurt,
baffled and powerless by the way the terrorism against Israelis is
covered. Air time is invariably given to Palestinians about their
losses, even when those losses are a Palestinian who has blown
him/herself up while trying to murder Israelis, or a Palestinian who has
been shot after a 'successful" or unsuccessful knifing attack. The
faces of israeli victims are rarely
shown. Thir families and friends are rarely interviewed. Ordinary
Israelis talking about the fear and trauma generated by tha attacks are
not featured. Its not that I'd like ONLY Israeli points of view to be
featured (and there are many) but that they ALSO be featured, alongside
Palestinian ones.

Last
night, (15/102015) for example, on ABC the Australian Broadcasting Corporation), the focus was on Palestinian losses, and all
the interviews were with Palestinians. There were no pictures of any of
the Israeli victims, or any video of the stabbings, shootings and car
rammings. There was some footage of MDA (Israeli Ambulances) and of
Israeli soldiers. There was an English soundbite from an Israeli woman -
a member of shalom achshav (Peace Now) saying that the security
measures Israel has put in place amount to "collective punishment". This
is in keeping with the general approach that the only Israeli voices
featured are ones that reinforce the narrative of Palestinian victimhood
and non-accountability.

BY CONTRAST, in the same newsbulletin
there was long coverage of a terrorist shooting in Sydney which occurred
two weeks ago. Then a 15 year old schoolboy "inspired" by Islamist
thinking, shot a Chinese police accountant before being gunned down
himself. Predictably the coverage focuses on the victim, on his funeral
which will be with full police honours at one of Sydney's largest
cathedrals. There is no attempt to humanise the perpetrator. His
accomplices, who were arrested yesterday, are not interviewed. their
grievances against The West or against Australia are not lovingly dwelt
upon. The loss of the assailant's life is not mentiond before the loss
of his victim's life, i.e the headlines do not read "15 year old boy
gunned down by Australian police." But when the BBC reported on the
stabbing of two men in Jerusalems old city, it reported the death of the
Palestinian attackers first, and then as an afterthought, without
causally linking the two, that two Israelis had been murdered.

And by the way, is not the stabbings of random Israelis a form of
collective punishment? Are not the pronouncements about keeping "Jews
with their dirty feet" away from the El Aksa mosque a form of Islamic
supremacist apartheid? I hope those who care about either Israelis or
Palestinians, or both (rather than those who care about conflict) will
expose themselves to multiple and varied news sources in order to get a
more 3 dimensional piture of what is going on.

"Everyone's got to serve someone"

a "hogeh deyot" - Hebrew for someone who thinks a lot about things that are not directly related to the daily round. I worships two G?ds, that are probably one and the same - creativity and balance. Sat. Chit. Ananda. Gila Rina Ditza ve Chedva. Adoshem Hu Elokim. Veshal-om shanti shanti.